Anne H. Janzer's Blog, page 31

A Book Marketing Strategy for Any Budget

New authors are confronted with book marketing advice everywhere they look. This person sold 10,000 copies in three months following a system that they’re selling, while that one got on a major television show by sending a video to a Hollywood star.

Some of these tactics work may work for you, but others won’t. Navigating this advice can be confusing and frustrating.

Indie authors usually don’t have the resources to exhibit at book shows or schedule interviews on daytime television. Most of us are starting from another place, and with a smaller budget.

Relax — you’ve got this. Book marketing is really about influencing human behavior, and that’s something you’ve been learning and doing your entire life.

Play to your strengths.

What indie authors lack in big budgets, we make up for in personal investment and relationships. Those attributes can serve as the foundation for a flexible book marketing strategy.

Your main objective, in book marketing, is turning strangers into readers and fans. It’s like making friends — something you’ve been doing since you went to school as a child.

The tactics that you use to achieve this goal may change as your platform and budget grows. But any tactic you deploy must drive an overall strategy. I’d suggest you start with a three-step plan grounded in basic rules of playground etiquette:

Make friends
Share
Ask nicely

When you approach it this way, book marketing isn’t intimidating or uncomfortable. It’s fun and rewarding.

Let’s look at how to put this strategy into action.

Make Friends

Your initial circle of connections (and potential readers) may be quite small: friends and family, colleagues, and people connected with you on social media.

Over time, you want to operate on a larger platform so your books can reach more people. To do that, you’ll need to start making friends.

First, find the right playground. Identify your target audience and the people who influence or interact with those readers. Find out where the action happens:

Where do your target readers hang out online?
Which authors do your readers follow?
What kinds of events do they go to?
Where do they purchase books?
What podcasts do they listen to?

Figure out where you’d like to be, and then start making friends.

The Internet is the largest playground around, so you need to be online, and social media is a great starting point. Find Facebook, LinkedIn, or Goodreads groups related to your subject, and participate.
Reach out directly to people you admire who influence your target audience.
Participate in in-person events, whether it’s a conference, a book club, or the local library. Nothing beats a personal connection.
Create an email list so new friends have a way of staying connected with you.
Make sure your books can be found where readers hang out on Amazon and Goodreads.
Make friends with other authors in your genre. Review their books on Amazon, Goodreads, or your blog. Reach out directly and let them know how their work affected you.

Get yourself and your books out into the world, whether physically or virtually.

Making friends is not about showing up and pitching your books. No, it’s about participating with others. First, start sharing.

Share With Others

After polishing every word with loving care, indie authors sometimes cling protectively to their books. While writing, they don’t want anyone to steal their ideas. When publishing, they don’t want to give away content from the book.

Take a deep breath and let it go. The best way to succeed is to share generously with your new friends.

Nonfiction authors can:

Give away a sample chapter.
Revisit and expand on ideas from the book in blog posts.
Create videos with content from the book.

What about fiction authors? Try one of the following:

Share an excerpt from the story.
Share research from or inspiration for the book
Make a video about you, your book’s setting, or related themes.

Don’t stop at the book’s content — share your time and expertise. Answer questions, help authors you admire spread the word about their books, and review other books.

When you give to those around you, others will reciprocate.

Ask Nicely

Asking is the third step because ideally, it happens after making friends and sharing. No one likes people who pound on the front door and start pitching. Don’t be that person.

At the same time, don’t hesitate to ask nicely. A while back, I brought a stack of books to an event at which I spoke. I gave my presentation, answered questions, and had a great time. We even had some post-event selfies going on. After everyone had left, I remembered the books. I’d forgotten to ask people if they were interested in buying one.

When you’ve done the work and given freely, it’s okay to ask for the sale, for a review, for a reference. When someone asks you how they can help, be ready with a suggestion.

Get comfortable asking.

If you make a thoughtful and polite request, the worst that can happen is that the person says no. (More often, you may hear silence.) But sometimes they will say yes.

A book sale is only one of the actions you can ask for, and it’s not always the most appropriate or valuable one. Consider these other types of requests:

Ask for reviews — and be willing to give away review copies
Ask others to share their thoughts
Ask people to subscribe to your email list (after you have provided valuable information in a blog)
Ask people on your email list to help you launch your next book

You earn the right to ask by executing the first two steps of your strategy: making friends and sharing. When you ask, do so politely.

Let me demonstrate how easy this is: If you enjoyed this article, share it with others. And if you really liked it and want to see more, sign up for my Writing Practices list. Thanks!

This article was originally published on The Verbs – a Medium publication by Pronoun.

The post A Book Marketing Strategy for Any Budget appeared first on Anne Janzer.

Chickens, Eggs, and Outlines

Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, shares occasional “reports from the trenches” on his weekly writing blog, describing the state of his current writing project.

So I thought I’d try something similar. It may look like I’m cranking out books seamlessly, but most of you see only the finished work, not the process behind it. The reality is less glamorous.

But beware – like watching sausage being made, it’s not always pretty.

The Mid-Draft Course Correction Strikes Again

Right now, I’m hard at work on my next book, with more than 20,000 words of an ugly first draft.

If you have read The Writer’s Process, then you know that I believe in breaking the work into its component parts. So, you can be sure that I’ve done extensive research before creating an outline. Also, I’m writing the first draft without revising and editing as I go. So far, so good.

This process consistently gets me about halfway through the first draft. Then, suddenly, nothing seems quite right.

This is the fourth book I’ve written (or the fifth if you count one I did with two co-authors), and the same thing happens each time. About halfway through the draft, I realize that the outline doesn’t quite work. Something’s wrong with the hook, or the organization, or both.

So I pull it apart and put it back together again.

Why? Why does this happen every time? Am I just really terrible at outlining?

Maybe, but that’s not the whole answer. The real problem is related to the classic philosophical conundrum:

Which comes first – the chicken or the egg?

In my case, it’s this:

Which comes first: Writing the book or understanding the reader?

When Your Outline Is the Egg

My outline is like an egg, holding the key to the finished work. It originates from my understanding of the topic and the reader. And that understanding evolves as I write.

Believe me, I try to think about the audience when I create the first outline. But it’s hard to see past all of the thoughts in my head about the topic.

As I immerse myself in writing, my understanding of the target reader deepens and shifts.

Here’s the thing: I have to commit to writing about a topic to fully immerse myself in the subject and the audience perspective. Having an outline prompts that kind of writing.

The outline begets the writing, which begets the outline.

Understanding My Process

When experienced, this mid-draft course correction feels painful. I interrupt the drafting to spend days agonizing over the book’s purpose and structure, questioning myself, and then shoving the work done so far into the new structure. Some things fall by the wayside, and the “to be written” list grows. At the end, I still have only half a draft – and an ugly one at that.

Having done this a few times, I no longer panic.

It’s comforting to realize that this is, in fact, part of my messy but functional process. It’s simply the way that I write books. That perspective gives me confidence that I’ll get through it, that this is my “normal” and not a sign of deficiency.

This perspective is precious. That’s one reason I write so much about process – if nothing else, understanding your own writing process can bring a sense of comfort when things seem to fall apart.

Related posts

Outgrowing Your Outline

How Much Research Should You Do?

 

 

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Books for Writers: The Shallows

If you want to read something that gives you chills, check out The Shallows by Nicholas Carr.

No, this isn’t the script for the move about a surfer and sharks. It’s a book about the Internet and our brains – a different kind of thriller.

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I not sure how I missed reading the book when it first came out. It was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. Carr writes about reading, technology, and cognitive science – a sweet intersection of my interests.

In case you missed it, I’m adding it to my growing list of Books for Writers: books that aren’t about writing, exactly, yet are still incredibly relevant for writers.

The basic premise of the book is as follows:

Our brains are plastic, in that they change based on our behavior. A load of neuroscience research in recent decades backs up this assertion.
The Internet has changed our behavior. (You only have to watch people on their phones in restaurants to confirm that fact.) Specifically, it changes the way that we read. When reading online, we skip around, browsing, clicking, and surfing. As a result, we spend less time in concentrated, linear reading, and more time deciding what to do next.
Because our behavior affects our brains, it follows that the Internet is changing the way that we read on an internal level. Our brains restructure themselves according to how spend our time, and we spend time skipping around, reading in short bursts.

Carr argues that in exchange for the many benefits of the Internet, we are trading away our ability to read with deep, linear thought processes.

“The Net delivers precisely the kind of sensory and cognitive stimuli – repetitive, intensive, interactive, addictive – that have been shown to result in strong and rapid alterations in brain circuits and functions.”

We are programming our brains for online surfing, and this has has serious implications for each of us – as readers and as writers.

How We Read

I am increasingly aware of my own tendency to skim when reading online. I click through to an interesting post, then gloss it over for key points, to see if it holds enough interest for deeper reading. I’m in a hurry  to get to the next thing.

I feel guilty, but there’s only so much time in the day. I have to hang out in the shallows.

(Don’t feel guilty if you skim this blog post.)

How We Write

Back in the 1990s, my freelance writing clients regularly requested technical white papers between 10 and 12 pages in length. By 2012, a five-pager was considered long, even for technical content.

Three pages is the new ten pages. 

This is true even when people need to read and understand a complicated topic. Our readers, like us, live in the shallows.

This fact changes not only how long our content is, but even how we approach the work of writing itself.

We write differently for readers with wandering attention.

Writes Carr, “The very existence of the attentive, critical reader provides the spur for the writer’s work. It gives the author the confidence to explore new forms of expression, to blaze difficult and demanding paths of thought, to venture into uncharted and sometimes hazardous territory.”

Without an attentive reader following our thoughts, we may keep our writing superficial.

What We Can Do As Writers

If we want to communicate effectively, we need to reach people where they are right now.

If readers encounter your work online, remember the limits of their attention. Use short, concise sentences. Avoid large, uninterrupted blocks of text.

We also need to give distracted readers an easy path back in to the text, using:

Headings and subheads
A logical structure for longer works like books
Call-outs or summaries of key points

Remember that only a select few things can earn your audience’s uninterrupted attention.

A friend who subscribes to my email list told me recently that she keeps my weekly Wednesday posts in her inbox, to read at leisure on the weekend. That felt like high praise.

Remember that concentrated reading time is rare and precious.

What We Can Do as Readers

The message of hope in all this is that the brain is shaped by our behavior. This means that we each have the opportunity to rewire our brains – even if the work of doing so is tough.

To change your brain’s wiring, practice.

If you think of yourself as someone who reads and thinks deeply, who can shut out distractions of the attention-seeking world, you have to practice that state.

As a musician, I’ve seen what smart practice can do. I understand its power.

The truth is, none of us can dive deeply on topic we encounter. The shallows are a safe place. But we can choose those times in which we choose leisurely, self-paced reading and protect them.

In recent years, I have made a point to carve out more time for uninterrupted, self-pace, single-processing reading – reclaiming my deep reading neural processes. I savor this kind of reading more, now that I recognize its scarcity.

If you haven’t yet read it, add The Shallows to your reading list. Then, take the time to sit and read it through thoughtfully.

How about you – do you find yourself losing your ability to read deeply? Are you protective of your reading time? Let me know what you think.

Other posts in the Books for Writers series:

Liminal Thinking by Dave Gray

Productivity for Creative People by Mark McGuinness

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Ghosts and Other Invisible Writers

“I read invisible writers…”

Their words are all around us. I detect them in press releases, blog posts and web pages, even in articles attributed to specific executives.

Some of these words are written by ghosts — well, ghostwriters. They intentionally choose to disappear behind another purported author. Invisibility is part of their job or their value proposition. Successful nonfiction book ghostwriters are often well compensated for their ability to disappear.

There are other types of writing ghosts:

Brand ghosts: Within the business environment, many individuals write in “the voice of the brand.” For certain roles in marketing, corporate communications, investor relations, and public relations, creating and writing in a brand voice is part of the job description.

Group ghosts: When a group collaborates on a writing project, one person frequently takes on the task of putting the team’s efforts into words. The team gets the credit, even though a single individual did the drafting phase of the project.

The invisible writing above is business-as-usual in many organizations. But there’s another type of ghost that’s more dangerous: the unhappy ghost.

Someone reached out to me a while back about a problem he experienced writing on the job. In his role, he worked with subject matter experts to write reports. He did the writing while the technical experts got the bylines. The writer felt that his contributions weren’t valued.

He felt invisible.

The unwilling ghost can haunt the workplace. Unhappy employees may resent the people they work with or the organization that employs them.

Does this sound familiar to you? Are you at risk of becoming an unwilling, unhappy ghost?

If you ever find yourself in this situation, consider how you can make your work visible where it matters.

Levels of Visibility

Recognition comes in many forms:

Authorship credit (a byline) signals to the world at large that you contributed to the creation of a piece of content. Everyone can see the authors.
Attribution is a public record of your role in a project. It may a qualified author attribution. For example, when you see “By Jane Doe with John Smith” on a technical journal article, many people will assume that Jane is the subject matter expert and John the writer.
Acknowledgment is recognition of your effort. Its scope may vary from your team, the organization, or the world at large.When you are acknowledged, others can see you if they look hard enough. When Apple first shipped the Macintosh,  you could click the About the menu option for the native software and see the list of developers who authored it. Apple gave external recognition to people who usually remained hidden behind the code.

These are the levels of recognition that you have to work with. Negotiate for the best you can get, while meeting the needs of the project. Perhaps you won’t be listed as the primary author, but an attribution acknowledges your contribution.

Your first obligation, as a writer, is to the reader. Your second is to the entity that employs you – the business.

Any attribution should meet the needs of both of those parties. For example, an investor reading the Shareholder Letter in an annual report wants to believe that it represents the words of the senior leadership. If someone else wrote it, that writer should remain invisible.

Be Visible Where It Matters

Even if the reader doesn’t see you, make sure others on your team and beyond are aware of your contributions. You can do this in subtle ways, such as reporting on your progress on these tasks, making the depth and extent of your work apparent.

Even if you are invisible to the reader, make sure you are seen and valued in your organization.

This post is based on content from The Workplace Writer’s Process. If you write on the job, check it out.

Other related posts (from the way-back machine)

Executive Ghostwriting Strategies

The Perils of Worshipping the Big Idea

 

 

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October Subscriptions: The Food Edition

Subscriptions and Food: Tasty Treats or Spoiled Goods?

If you’re part of the food industry, you’d better be paying attention to the potential for subscription disruption.

Amazon bought Whole Foods, opening a whole barrel of speculation about what will happen with when you mix organic food and drone deliveries.
Blue Apron reports both money and customers falling off the plate (see the Bloomberg article here).
Albertson’s gobbles up the meal-kit company Plated. (See the article in Fortune.)

If you invest in (or work for) subscription meal kits, this Halloween might be a particularly spooky time. Robbie Kellman Baxter wrote a terrific blog post about the subscription meal box industry and its inevitable changes: The Beginning of the End for Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Gobble and the Rest of the Meal Kit Companies.

What about subscriptions to restaurant meals? That’s a tougher nut to crack. (Goodness, I’m having fun with the food metaphors). Check out this post about MealPal, entitled What I learn after 30 days chasing my subscription lunch.

Finally, Amazon caught my attention with a Prime Surprise Sweets box.  It’s not quite a subscription – it’s a box you order on demand. They even give you a dashboard button you can hit whenever the urge for sweets hits.

This could be trouble for people like me:

Are You Subscribing to a Guilt Trip?

Do you ever feel subscription guilt? You know you do. (I’m eyeing my enormous pile of unread New Yorker magazines right now.)

How about your subscribers? Do they feel guilty about not using it enough to compensate for the cost? If so, think about what that means for long term retention.

A comment conversation with Robbie Kellman Baxter led me to write this post: The Subscription Guilt Trip.

When the Business Model Holds the Key To Value

The subscription businesses that interest me most are those in which the the business model adds value in and of itself, beyond convenience or cost.

StitchFix is one example. You subscribe to clothing and a personal stylist makes selections for you. The longer you remain a subscriber, the better that stylist knows what works for you. The value grows for everyone.

As someone who is stylistically challenged, I can see the value to being a long-term subscriber. See this recent article in the New York Times: How to Use Clothing Subscription Boxes to Find Your Personal Style

Other Resources You Might Find Useful

A Book on Writing in the Workplace: I’m tooting my own book’s horn, but The Workplace Writer’s Process just earned a nice review in Publishers Weekly. My favorite line: “This guide will be invaluable for many a professional library.”

B2B Marketing Research: Every year, Marketing Profs and Content Marketing Institute collaborate to release B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends. This year’s report doesn’t disappoint. If you haven’t seen it, check it out now. I guarantee you’ll find something useful.

Home Page Smarts for SaaS Businesses: Barry Feldman published this relentlessly useful post on SaaS home page smarts. Check it out: SaaS Websites: Content, Copy & Design Ideas for the Homepage.

SaaS Startup Benchmarks: OpenView Ventures surveyed 300 SaaS startups for benchmarks and wisdom, and share it all here. My favorite part: Growth at all costs only works for so long. Amen!

Upcoming Events

Subscription Insider webinar: Go beyond SaaS management to grow your SaaS business.

November 8, 9am Pacific, 12pm Eastern

This online seminar covers the entire digital commerce lifecycle, including strategies for turning “revenue leakage into revenue uplift.” Register here.

SUBCOM 2017: The Subscription Commerce Summit

November 14-15, Marines Memorial Club, San Francisco.

The speaker list continues to grow. Emma Clark from Recurly will share benchmark research into acquisition and churn from more than 1,200 subscription commerce sites. Check out the whole program and register here.

 

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The Five Phases of Book Research

My favorite part is of the writing process isn’t crafting the perfect sentence, making a brilliant point, or polishing words. No, it’s research. That’s a good thing, because as a nonfiction author, I spend a great deal of time actively researching, even when not at work on another book.

Sometimes that work doesn’t look like traditional research (the kind that happens in a library). It may include creating blog posts on a topic, freewriting to clarify thoughts, looking for data, interviewing experts, or talking with others. It’s any activity involved in gathering thoughts, data, and insights on a topic.

Research is the fun part.

The writing recipe outlined in The Writer’s Process lists research as the first, discrete step in a multi-phase writing process. That’s true for small, self-contained projects.

But research doesn’t fit in a single box when you’re embarking on major projects like nonfiction books.

Always Be Researching

If you hang around sales teams long enough, you’ll hear the mantra Always Be Closing (ABC). The saying was immortalized by Alex Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross (with questionable results.) It lives on as sales motivation.

Here’s a counterpart for the nonfiction author: Always Be Researching.

Book research never stops – it just shifts, changing phase or focus.

If you think of research as a single step that you begin and end, you may put uncomfortable limits on your work. Instead, think about five phases of research. If you plan to write more than one book, you’re always in at least one of them.

The phases below describe writing a nonfiction book, but could apply to any large content project.

Phase One: Exploratory Research

During this phase, you have no constraints or deadlines (yet), and you’re exploring and learning. That’s why it’s fun. Undertake exploratory research on a topic for the following reasons:

To figure out what you already know and what you want to know about a topic
To explore areas that interest you and see which topics or questions emerge

For any given project, the exploratory phase can last months, or even years. It’s rarely a full-time process – it can happen while you juggle other projects.

The secret to exploratory research is to do it with intention. Take it seriously.

Read carefully, take notes, gather your thoughts. Start collecting ideas and thoughts. This primes your brain to look around for related examples and interesting tangents.

As Louis Pasteur reportedly said, chance favors the prepared mind. Exploratory research prepares the mind to notice ideas and insights about your topic.

Phase Two: Project Research

At some point, you have to determine if there’s a viable book in that research, and if so, what it looks like. These are the questions you need to answer in this phase:

Can you come up with an interesting angle?
Is there an audience of people who may need or want this?
Does it make sense to pursue?
Will it be interesting and worthwhile to write about?

This phase might include exploring other books on the market, researching the core audience, talking with people, and determining how you want to spend your time. (Writing a book is a big investment of your time and energy, so make sure you want to undertake the project.)

The outcome of this phase might be a book proposal – even if you write it for yourself.

When you’re done, you’ll be ready to plan the project and move on to focused research.

Phase Three: Focused Research

Gather the ingredients for the book you plan to write. Make your list of sources, assemble and read the necessary books and articles, schedule the interviews, and keep careful notes.

Ideally, at the end of this phase you’ll be ready to write a decent outline of the book.

The challenge is knowing when to start outlining and drafting.You’ll never be able to do every conceivable bit of research. Perfect is truly the enemy of “good enough” in this situation.

You don’t have to be done with the research to start outlining and drafting the book.

Moving on is easier if you believe that instead of stopping the research, you’re beginning the fourth phase – supporting research.

Phase Four: Supporting Research

As you write the draft, you may dive back into the research looking for quotes or data points, or to answer fresh questions. The act of writing the first draft often reveals the need for additional sources to fill out a section or make the book more interesting and authoritative.

Supporting research can happen in parallel, offering small respites from the work of drafting.

Some authors deploy research assistants in this phase. That might work for you, too.

This phase usually ends with the publication of the book.

There’s a risk to investing heavily in supporting research: it’s easy to use the excuse of “just one more source” to put off revising and publishing.

Put boundaries on the supporting research. At some point, you have to publish.

Phase Five: Ongoing Research

Having published your book, you may be ready to put the subject behind you for a while. You’re not thinking about continuing the research. But it’s almost impossible to avoid.

Once the book is out, you’ll talk with people about it, and your learning doesn’t stop. New developments happen in the field, fresh examples appear in front of you.

You can either shut the door to these events or remain open to a background level of ongoing research.

Done right, ongoing research has many benefits:

It generates fodder for articles, blog posts, or talks to support your author platform.
Over time, you may assemble enough great content  content to justify a  a second (or third or fourth) edition of your book, or possibly a companion.

Better yet, the background research may uncover related areas of interest, which lead you right back into the first phase, exploratory research, for your next book.

 

If you know someone struggling in the research phase of a book project, please share this post with them.

Here are a couple of related posts that you might like:

How Much Research Should You Do?

Don’t Buy Into the One-Step Writing Myth

 

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Subscription Guilt Trips

I was having a comment conversation with Robbie Kellman Baxter the other day and…

Wait – you don’t know what a comment conversation is?

It’s what writers do when they start exchanging ideas and stories in the comments of a blog post, because they’re too lazy to pick up the phone and call, and are more comfortable writing.

Anyway, Robbie (the author of The Membership Economy) wrote a terrific blog post about Blue Apron and the other meal kit companies. In the post, she mentions how the meal kit subscription model “puts undue pressure on the subscriber.”

Her comment about “undue pressure” sparked our comment conversation. She shared a story of a neighbor who turned down a dinner invitation because he had to go home and cook the Blue Apron meal waiting there.

That got me thinking about what happens when we can’t live up to our subscriptions. I’ve written in the past about Subscription Fatigue, but this is something different. Let’s call it Subscription Guilt.

Subscription Guilt

Subscription guilt is what happens when the reality of our daily choices clashes with our commitment to a subscription, and we make decisions to alleviate that conflict:

I’d go to the movies, but I just upgraded my Netflix so should watch more.

I’d eat dinner with Robbie, but I’ve got to cook that meal box.

Suddenly, our reason for subscribing (convenience, fun) has morphed into something else (obligation, hassle).

Some subscriptions are more prone to guilt than others.

For example, when we subscribe to a vegetable box, we may count on the subscription to inspire us to eat more vegetables. Or, we sign up for a gym membership in hopes of working out more. (I paid, I really should go.)

In those situations, a bit of guilt might be a good thing. The guilt trip may be part of the value proposition, as your rational, forward-thinking self tries to outsmart your lazy, couch potato self.

But if the subscription value proposition is fun, convenience, cost savings, identity, or entertainment, then guilt can be a problem.

Are You Burdening Your Subscribers?

If you sell or market a subscription service, think about the effect your subscription has on a customer over time, after the initial excitement has waned.

Is it possible that you’re inducing subscription guilt? And if so, you can you mitigate that feeling, and keep the subscriber contented and guilt-free?

Perhaps you can offer more flexible delivery options, or the ability to dial back briefly on delivery or share a subscription with someone else for a time. Maybe offer a “vacation” setting that lets people pause and then restart, to accommodate shifting life circumstances.

You might lose a bit of short-term revenue through these offers, but keep the long-term subscriber. And that’s nearly always a better deal for your ongoing growth and revenue.

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Metaphors in Nonfiction: Unexpected Truths

What does the gin represent in T. S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party? How about the water?

Questions like these torment students of literature. As an English major in college, I dedicated many brain cycles to analyzing figurative language in fiction: similes, metaphors, imagery, etc.

Little did I know that the study of figurative language would be useful after graduation, when writing about technology.

Nonfiction Writers Need Metaphors

If you write nonfiction – and especially if you write about dry, technical topics – brush up your metaphors. They make your work more effective by waking up the reader.

For this post, I’m going to focus on the big gorilla of figurative language, the metaphor. (See what I did there, using gorilla as a metaphor?)

For anyone needing a refresher, a metaphor is a figure of speech that claims two things are the same when, taken literally, they are not.

In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Jacques exclaims: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

A simile explicitly points to the comparison, often with the words like or as. Rephrased as a simile, the Shakespeare line would have gone: “All the world is like a stage, and all the men and women are like players…”

Better accuracy, less impact.

The tech industry loves a good metaphor:

The 800 pound gorilla
Unicorns

We even use technologies as metaphors for other technologies: It’s Netflix for [industry to be disrupted.]

Why do we love them so? An effective metaphor works on the reader’s brain in two ways:

Grabbing the reader’s attention with something unexpected, enlisting associative thought processes
Improving comprehension and revealing meaning

Put differently: A metaphor is an unexpected truth.

The Cognitive Kick of a Metaphor

You’re reading along about businesses, and suddenly there’s a unicorn. Part of your brain stops for a moment: A unicorn? Aren’t we talking about privately-held companies?

A metaphor grabs your attention by claiming something that is clearly not true in a literal sense. Part of the brain (which may have been dozing off while reading about income statements) suddenly sits up and takes notice.

Metaphors force the brain to turn off cruise control and pay attention. The reader must engage other mental systems to make sense of what they have encountered.

The first time you read of a start-up described as a unicorn, what happened? Your brain quickly tried to sort it out, rummaging around to make sense of it.

You may have thought, “What do I know about unicorns? They have a single horn. They’re white. They are magical – and, of course, fantasy. Even in fantasy stories, they are extremely rare.”

Your visual systems kicked in the imagery, your memory furnished part of a Harry Potter story, and then you came up with a connection: perhaps these start-up valuations are too good to be true. Is that what the author is trying to say?

When writing about difficult or abstract topics, metaphors add variety and interest.

Much of a metaphor’s power comes from novelty. When used all the time, they become cliché. They longer catch your attention or reveal anything new. The metaphor becomes short-hand for past conversations or ideas – a useful abstraction, but no longer unexpected.

Take-away: To get someone’s attention, choose a fresh image – something that your target reader hasn’t necessarily encountered in this context before.

Remember, though, that one reader’s cliché is another’s fresh new insight. You and your colleagues may use a phrase repeatedly, but to someone unfamiliar with your domain, the image may require an explanation.

The Meaning Behind the Metaphor

Note that the unicorn metaphor might support several possible interpretations. Perhaps it means that these are truly magical companies, discovered only in moonlight by virgin investors. Perhaps they are exceedingly rare, or their virtues are fictional.

Those meanings may change over time.

According to extensive research (more accurately, a quick look on Wikipedia), the start-up unicorn metaphor originated with venture capitalist Aileen Lee, now of Cowboy Ventures. She used the term to define private startups valued over a billion dollars. At the time, these high-value startups were nearly as rare as unicorns.

Now, unicorns are trampling all over the tech industry. CBInsights’ real-time Unicorn Tracker tallies more than 200 such companies.

An effective metaphor illustrates an important truth. If its meaning is not immediately obvious, curiosity spurs you to read on and discover the underlying truth.

Take-away: Make sure the deeper truth of the metaphor is clear to the reader and that it fits what you’re trying to communicate. Don’t wait too long before explaining it. The half-life on a reader’s curiosity can be remarkably short.

Wield this Weapon With Care

The metaphorical image may connect to areas of the brain beyond the rational and sensory-processing frontal cortex. It may summon memories with positive or negative emotional associations or even trigger the “fight-or-flight” amygdala.

If you want to use a clown as a guiding metaphor, consider its potential impact on readers who have a deep-seated fear of clowns. (Find coulrophobia in Merriam-Webster –  it’s a thing.)

Cultural differences may come into play as well.

Do you remembers when, after the September 11th attacks, President Bush spoke extemporaneously about a crusade against terrorism?

The word “crusade” probably help a specific, emotional meaning for him: a deep commitment, the joining of forces for a common cause. But to the countries of the Middle East, the word recalled the historical Crusades, retrieving an entirely different set of associations about deadly clashes in the name of religion and the onset of western imperialism.

The metaphor was counterproductive in the global context.

The right metaphor makes your writing more effective. When explaining nonfiction topics, metaphors can clarify essential points and make them memorable. But wield metaphors with care, as they can inflict unintentional damage.

Related posts you might find interesting:

Writers and the Myths of Creativity

Writing in the Workplace: Abstract Concepts

The post Metaphors in Nonfiction: Unexpected Truths appeared first on Anne Janzer.

Tools for Writers: Your Favorites

Can Technology Make You a Better Writer?

Writers love to talk about the tools they use. But that begs the critical question: can technology make you better a better writer?

The answer is a cautious yes. For example:

Apps can motivate you to set and stick to your writing goals.
Some applications make it easier for you to write by eliminating the distractions of other technologies.
Online tools can let you work in different environments or from various devices. (Cloud-based writing tools come to mind here.)
Software can help you become better at revising and editing, which improves your output.

Remember it’s not the technology, but how you use it that matters.

Some writers are have firmly set habits and ways of working. These people greet writing apps and tools with a shrug, or at best curious indifference.

What about people at the beginning of their writing careers, still establishing process and habits?

Specifically, I’m thinking of college students.

An English professor at a Pennsylvania college asked about writing tools for his students. I decided to look beyond my own experiences and habits.

The Wisdom of the Writing Crowd

What technologies would you recommend to other writers at the early stages of their careers?

To meet the needs of college students, any suggestions should be:

Easy to use
Free or affordable – let’s not add to the student loan debt!
Useful for all types of writing – research papers, term papers, fiction, etc.

I posed this question to people in writing groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, and these are a few of the responses I’ve received, categorized as much as possible by the phase of the writing process addressed.

Apps for Researching/Collecting Ideas

Evernote (Evernote.com) –  This is the big gorilla in the research-gathering and note-taking area. To synchronize notes across more than two devices (say, your phone and your laptop), you need a paid account, which starts at $3.99 per month, or $34.99 per year. If you want a free alternative, read on.

Apple Notes with iCloud – Apple Notes is a great alternative to Evernote for Mac and iPhone/iPad users. It comes free with your device and loads super-fast. (It’s my go-to choice for grabbing notes and ideas on the fly.)

Google Keep (google.com/keep) – Lest you accuse me of having an Apple bias, you can also use the free Google note-taking app.

Bear Writer (Bear-Writer.com) – This iOS and Mac application spans from note-taking to writing, and comes recommended by writer friends. The core version is free to use.

Pinterest – Are you a visual thinker? Consider Pinterest. The author Abbie Edmonds shared this tip about using Pinterest:  “I pin websites to Pinterest to a secret idea dump board that I keep.”  Oh, it’s also free to use.

Freewriting Apps

Freewriting, or writing rapidly and fluidly without criticism or correction, is a terrific way to create a daily writing habit and practice writing in a state of flow. (Read the post Fast, Fluid, and Fearless.) Here are a couple apps that can help you get comfortable with the process.

The Most Dangerous Writing App – Use this browser-based application to train your ability to write without editing and refining. Its creator, Manual Ebert, has a cognitive science background, and created the app to train people to separate the act of creation from self-editing. He reports that it is widely used in classrooms.

750Words (750words.com) – I used this app for a couple years to make a solid habit of writing every day. It tracks the days you hit your goal and the ones you missed. It’s free for the first 30 days, then $5 per month afterwards. Again, this might be useful for training a writing habit.

Focusing on the Work

Sometimes we need technology to avoid the distractions of technology – very meta. Here are two that writer friends report using:

Freedom (freedom.to) – This application works across your browser and phone (iOS and Android). Use the app to block specific websites for time periods – like checking Facebook during your dedicated writing time. The basic plan costs about $2.50 a month.

FocusKeeper (limepresso.com) –  One writer friend recommended this ioS-based timer for work.

Writing Environments

Google Docs – As a basic cloud-based writing environment, Google Docs fits the bill beautifully. It’s already widely used in education and supports group project work and editing, so it earns a place on this list.

Ulysses (Ulyssesapp.com) – This Mac and iOS app organizes projects and provides a clean workspace. A writer friend recommends it. It’s sold as a subscription, with monthly or discounted annual subscriptions. The company discounts student pricing, with six-month subscriptions for $10.99.

The Right Margin (TheRightMargin.com) – I use The Right Margin to combine planning and writing in one cloud-based environment. The yearly Austen plan comes out to about $6 per month. Students involved in creating multiple research papers could find it valuable.

Scrivener (literatureandlatte.com) – Many of the authors I know swear by Scrivener. It looks like it would be fabulous for working on a thesis as well.

Editing and Revising

The secret of good writing? Excellent editing. Here are a few suggestions.

Grammarly (grammarly.com) – Many writers recommend this one. Use the browser extension and you can check your writing anywhere you’re working. And it’s free.

Hemingway App (hemingwayapp.com) – Death to academic-sounding writing! The Hemingway app will search out passive voice, complex sentences, and over-reliance on adverbs. It also assesses a grade level for your writing. Use the free browser version or the desktop app (Mac or PC, $20).

Merriam-Webster online (merriam-webster.com) – Is that one word or two? Or hyphenated? What’s the correct usage? Merriam-Webster’s online site can answer most of those questions. Warning: I end up getting distracted by cool word-related posts.

That’s my woefully incomplete list. Are there any apps that you would want to add? Let me know in the comments and I’ll update this before I send it on to the college class!

Remember, your most important writing tool is your brain. More on that in The Writer’s Process – the proud winner of a Gold Medal in the Reader’s Favorite international book award contest.

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Books for Writers: Liminal Thinking

Understand Readers’ Beliefs – and Your Own

We live in an increasingly divided world. Whether you’re gathering news and information from television, traditional newspapers, or online sources, chances are that you pay attention to people who share your beliefs.

When we encounter people on the “other end” of our political or belief spectrum, we can be amazed that they dismiss ideas that seem so obvious to us.

Dave Gray, author of Liminal Thinking, would say that we are engaged in a battle for the obvious.

As writers, we must understand our role in that battle. Reading Liminal Thinking is a great place to start.

While the book is focused for a business audience, its practices are particularly relevant for writers who hope to change the world, one reader at a time.

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The Power, and Limits, of Our Beliefs

Gray defines liminal thinking as “the art of creating change by understanding, shaping, and reframing beliefs.”

If you’re a writer who wants to make a change in the world, liminal thinking is a powerful tool.

The book starts by summarizing six core principles that explain how and why we dig into our belief systems. (Read all six principles on the book’s website.)

To summarize, beliefs are models that we create to manage reality. They are human and social constructions that we share with others. Belief systems help us navigate a complex world.

Yet, like any model, they are imperfect matches to reality, with limitations and blind spots. Reality is complex and dynamic, changing more quickly than our belief systems can keep pace.

Shared belief systems protect themselves. Gray describes to “self-sealing” logic that glosses over any flaws in our models. When beliefs are tied to our personal identities, we work even harder to insulate them from change.

To make real change, we have to be able to step outside of those systems and look beyond our blind spots.

Writing from the Threshold

The word “liminal” means, among other things, on the threshold. Liminal writing requires working at the boundaries.

Writers, like readers, operate within their own belief systems. To effectively create change, we should adopt the practices of liminal thinking, questioning our assumptions and learning how to gently shift beliefs.

Gray lays out nine practices for liminal thinking. (Read all nine here.) Of those, the following practices are particularly important for writers.

Assume you are not objective

Understand that you, too, operate in a bubble of shared conceptions. I’ve written about The Curse of Knowledge, or the tendency to act as if others share our current knowledge. You might say that Gray’s book describes a Curse of Belief – the inability to see outside our own circle of things that seem obvious.

Things that seem obvious to you are not obvious to others who do not share the same sets of beliefs. Writes Gray:

“The obvious is not obvious. It is constructed.”

You need to be able to step to the threshold of your own belief system before inviting others to change theirs.

Triangulate and evaluate

Question your beliefs. Can you disprove them? Can you try on a different way of thinking and see how that changes things?

Comfort in our own beliefs blinds us to other potential realities. Writes Gray:

“Most of the time we are all walking around with our heads so full of ‘obvious’ that we can’t see what’s really going on.”

Ask questions and make connections

Try to understand the belief systems of others. For writers, this practice entails understanding your target readers and getting into their heads. You may have to ask people about what they feel and want, and truly listen to their answers without judgment.

Make sense with stories

You probably knew this was coming, but the best way to shift another person’s belief is to share a story. Stories are entries into different belief systems. Remember that beliefs defend themselves with “self-sealing” logic. Stories work their way through that defensive barrier. Writes Gray,

“If you give people facts without a story, they will explain it within their existing belief system.”

Take-Aways for Writers

As writers, we have a choice: do we continue to write and reach only those who already share our beliefs, or do we try to bridge the gaps? Do we attempt to spark change, loosening those hardened positions and finding a middle ground in which we can be heard?

If you hope to influence peoples’ thoughts or change behavior with your writing, then this short book will be invaluable.

Working in the liminal spaces may not be comfortable; stepping outside your own beliefs may feel both threatening and empowering. But it’s the best chance you have of becoming an effective agent for change.

Books for Writers

This is one of a series of posts about books that, while not ostensibly about writing, maybe very useful to writers. I will continue to add books to the list. Here’ are a few other posts that fit into this category:

How We Learn

Two Books to Build Resilience (Grit and Known)

Productivity for Creative People

You can find all of my book reviews here.

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